Yearly Archives: 2018

Not including this blog post, we have published almost 50 updates on office design, office furniture and commercial property in 2018 covering all aspects of design, employee well-being, office furniture and office fixtures. So, with 2018 drawing to a close we thought we'd take a look back and see which posts were the most popular with our audience.

Office Design Trends 2018 - A Review

The word "popular" is always going to be open to subjectivity, but in order to quantify this we reviewed our top three social media sites and looked at the analytics for the blog posts we shared over the past year. Breaking this down into three social media platforms and analysing the posts that performed the best, and therefore those we have chosen to call the most popular, these are as follows:

Our top performing posts on LinkedIn covered types of office partitions, office furniture, and office design trends, with the most popular post being the article we wrote on 5 ways in which to create a healthier workspace:

We all know that your audience on Facebook is not the same as that on LinkedIn, and therefore we were expecting to see a different result here. But we were wrong. The same blog post, how to create a healthier workspace, outperformed all of the others by a considerable margin. But the others in the top five were different to LinkedIn's top four posts and included one of our favourites, it being a bit of fun, on tree house offices:

Our Twitter page took a little more sifting through as we have shared more articles here than on any other social platform. Interestingly, none of the top five posts here matched either the LinkedIn nor the Facebook top fives, but covered office design trends, the use of glass in office design and options for greener offices. Our top performing post on Twitter referenced the use of art in the office as a means of increasing workers productivity:

There were a handful of blog posts that stood out across all of our social media as well as our Google analytics account - and these were the four updates that had nothing to do with office design, furniture, fixtures or other aspects of commercial property. 20sixltd were incredibly proud to have been sponsors of two amazing veterans who rowed across the Pacific ocean raising funds for charity. And these guys were the most popular updates if we add up all platforms.

As the year draws to an end and offices and commercial buildings across the land are decked out in garish Christmas decorations, we can start to think about how our work spaces are going to look come the new year when once again stripped bare of the coloured tinsel and flashing lights. Taking down the festive adornments can sometimes show just how tired your working environment is looking and highlight the need for a fresh design for your office in 2019.

5 Office Design Ideas For 2019

Colour: The near universal use of “colours” such as Magnolia in commercial property has everything to do with budget – being the cheapest option to buy and therefore touch up, it can also be paired with pretty much any other colour. But giving your work space a more personal colour can brighten the environment and bring the company branding into the office in more cohesive pattern.

Kitchen: Often cited as the heart of the home and the most popular place for people to gather at a party, the office kitchen is often overlooked. We’ve probably all come across those “kitchens” that are little more than a dark cupboard where you’re too scared to use the cups as you’re unsure of the hygiene. But this is a great space to spend some of your budget on as it should be an area where all employees, no matter what department, can come and meet up and exchange thoughts, ideas and conversations.

Furniture: Ergonomic office furniture is not a fad – it should be a pre-requisite for any working environment. From the options of sit-stand desks to office chairs that support your posterior and protect your posture, getting the correct furniture will help the health and wellbeing of your staff.

Flooring: There are a myriad of options for office flooring, and you need to take into consideration the function as much as the form, but replacing old, threadbare carpets or peeling lino can bring a whole new feel to your work space. From carpet tiles through to wooden floors, we often overlook what’s right underneath our feet.

Lighting: Arguably the most important area of your overall design plan, getting your office lighting right has been scientifically proven to improve your work force’s productivity. One of the key tenets here is to ensure that there is as much natural daylight as possible without having sunshine cause overheating or disabling computer screens due to the reflective glare.

20sixltd have extensive hands-on experience of helping a wide range of market sectors to achieve a workable office design that supports their staff and reflects their brand. If you are looking to update, revamp or completely redesign your office space in 2019 please get in touch to see how we can help you to achieve your desired working environment.

The hours that we clock up at work and the time spent actually doing work are different things. We may get to our office by 8am and not leave until 5.30 but the time in between this that we are being truly productive will be significantly less.

Two recent studies have concluded that the average worker spends less than 60% or their working day being productive and that for some only 2 hours and 53 minutes of an 8-hour workday are spent working.

Couple this with UK productivity reportedly being among the lowest in the developed world, and you can begin to see that we have a national problem. But what if we could use design to change this, to optimise those precious work hours?

Enter the new design concept of the Eudaimonia Machine. “The what?” we hear you say - the Eudaimonia Machine is a precise work space layout based upon Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia, meaning the epitome of human capability. And it’s not quite as complex as it might at first sound.

Eudaimonia describes the highest state of being – a classic example given to illustrate this is that of a kitchen knife: eudaimonia for a knife is being sharp and cutting. If it’s dull or just resting on the counter, it’s not achieving its highest state. And this concept is being applied to people when they are at work and how the environment that they work in can assist in them being fully productive.

In an attempt to reduce the distractions that we all face on a daily basis in the work place, the Eudaimonia Machine design is based on matching spaces to specific tasks and mindsets. It is about putting the “human” at the centre of office design rather than technology. Work spaces are divided into distinct zones, with areas for socialising having furniture you would be more used to seeing in your homes, and spaces where the hard work needs to be accomplished having more traditional office furniture.

Other zones are included as well, such as “well-being” spaces that may have a proliferation of plants, or showering facilities, and libraries full of books that will help staff achieve their potential, but minus technology that can be as distracting as it can helpful.

The ideas behind this design concept are still in their infancy, with a New York store trailing an experimental retail concept that has just opened, and two more projects in the pipeline in the US. Will this design concept take off? We’ll have to watch and see in 2019, but the tenet behind it makes sound architectural and commercial sense.

You may recall back in May of this year we wrote a blog post on Smart Office Walls - now it's the windows turn to get a smart dressing.

The recent survey of 1,000 GB-based office workers undertaken by YouGov found that 32% would like more access to natural light - indeed, light levels play an integral part in employees well-being, satisfaction with their work place and productivity levels. So it would seem a smart move to introduce smart blinds.

What Are Smart Blinds?

The most basic smart blinds can be motorised, enabling you to click a button for them to open or close. More advanced options will give you the option to set timers for the blinds. Connecting to your Virtual Assistants, such as Google Dot and Amazon's Alexa, we get the advancement of light sensitive activation, whereby your office blinds will sense the light levels and the weather outside and open and close automatically. If you also have smart lighting installed, the two can work alongside each other so that when the blinds open, the lights go off and vice versa.

There are, of course, a couple of downsides to these types of window coverings. Firstly they are beholden to a decent, continuous internet connection. And we could argue that by having the blinds automatically open and close you are missing the opportunity of getting up and walking away from your desk, albeit only briefly.

That being said, we are seeing smarter solutions coming in for commercial properties that will make for energy and financial savings for businesses in the long term, and are looking forward to seeing what new technological developments occur to make all of our working environments better places to be.